The eight-day Spring Festival holiday from Feb. 10 to Feb. 17 has seen a vibrant consumption boom with more people on trips, more holiday goods purchases, more family time spent in festive activities, allowing people to arrange their holiday activities with more options. According to data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 474 million domestic tourism trips were made during the Spring Festival holiday, an increase of 19% compared with that of the pre-pandemic period in 2019.

The eight-day Spring Festival holiday has seen many people on trips, domestic tourists spending a total of 632.7 billion RMB (about 89.07 billion U.S. dollars) in total, 7.7% up from the same holiday period in 2019. The data shown a new trend in domestic tourism for cross-regional travel between the northern and southern parts of the country during the holiday.

After a lapse of four years, the Chinese Spring Festival once again became the peak of global travel consumption. According to the National Immigration Administration, a total of 13.52 million inbound and outbound visits were made during the holiday. The number of daily average visits was 1.69 million, a 2.8-time increase over the same holiday period last year.

Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, which recently waived visas for Chinese tourists, saw significant growth in tourism bookings during the Spring Festival. Data from multiple online travel platforms showed that ticket bookings from China to Singapore during the holiday increased by 29 times compared to the same period last year, while Kuala Lumpur increased by 20 times, and Bangkok increased by 16 times.

Destinations with flights of over 10 hours, such as Melbourne in Australia, London in the UK, Istanbul in Turkey, Auckland in New Zealand, and Cairo in Egypt, became popular cities for Chinese tourists. Among them, ticket bookings to Dubai saw the highest increase, more than 10 times higher than that of the Spring Festival period in 2023.

Experts believe that the revved-up Spring Festival tourism consumption heralds an upward momentum in the tourism sector in 2024. In a recent report, the China Tourism Academy estimated that over 6 billion domestic trips will be made in 2024, and the total number of inbound and outbound travelers is expected to exceed 260 million.